Defensive gun use is an interesting topic because only examining justifiable homicide overlooks scenarios where a gun was used to repel attackers, but not actually lethally fired. It's pretty difficult to get good data on defensive uses that don't end with body bags.
Well the cdc estimates 500,000 to 3 million defensive uses of a firearm in america every year. The data is there you just have to look for it, people won’t give it out to you because it wouldn’t fit the narrative of what they want you to think.
Once again, thank you for presenting the facts! Especially regarding "mass shootings" being such a low percentage of gun deaths in the U.S., and suicides being the vast majority of gun deaths. These are facts people often ignore in a crusade against gun ownership, pointing at mass shootings as a HUGE reason we need to restrict gun ownership. If a person feels gun ownership should be restricted, "mass shootings" are a pretty wobbly leg to stand on.
Your right ....Just using that AS a reason is a little weak....but i think mailing IT difficult to own guns and having to keep The Position of The gunsafe Secret from The Family and having to hide The Key could lower The hin related deaths and Mass Shootings....Mass Shootings are relatively rare but compared with Like Germany (where i did Not really Heard of more than three or four Mass Shootings ) there are a Lot of Mass Shootings....AS i Said compared with Germany and er have ...i think... Stricter laws No Automatic weapons for example and No one IS allowed to know where your save is, where The Key is or what The Code is....If Police etc find Out a Person mit having a fun license Knies where The Key is or Knies The Code The guns are Talent away from You I dont know how IT IS in america... But from what i heared IT IS Not that strickt with weapons storage
2:18. The reason for the number of "justifiable killings" 4% is what you cited) is so low is because often, 1) the gun is never fired because the criminal either fled or surrendered or 2) the gun owner fired a warning shot and nobody got hurt or killed. The gun still saved the gun owner's life despite the fact the gun was not fired. I am grateful you honestly acknowledged that most gun deaths are suicides rather than homicides. And personally, I believe the ability to choose to end one's own life is a fundamental right.
As a gun owner I thank you for your level and balanced reporting on this topic. I have long insisted to all who would listen that we need more studies on gun violence. Without scientifically rigorous studies it is impossible to know what will help and what will do nothing but hurt legal gun owners. Maybe the answer really is get rid of all the guns, I hope not, but the only way were gonna find an alternative is through data and studies.
The CDC found guns are used defensively no less than 500,000 times per year and possibly as many times as 3,000,000. This far outweighs the crimes involving guns. The thing most studies overlook is that using a gun to defend yourself or others does not require you fire the gun. Indeed in FAR more than 90% of cases where an armed citizen defends themselves with a gun, they only have to show the gun to their attacker, the attacker flees, and no one is hurt. The CDC found this method of self defense the safest possible method, including safer than not resisting at all. One thing about this; the FBI and CDC found these numbers difficult to track because they estimated that at least hundreds of thousands of cases went unreported to the police. The victims who defend themselves with a gun without firing it tend to “go their separate way” once the danger is gone and not involve the police.
Yes, lots of guns in America. Despite that, violent crime has dropped by over 50% since 1991 according to the FBI, while gun ownership has increased. More importantly, most gun crimes are committed in poor urban area's by minorities, not because they are minorities but because of unequal distribution of wealth that imo should be addressed before gun ownership. Either way, more studies are needed. As for the good people out there who decide to purchase a firearm, get training. Every state has multiple NRA certified instructors that offer courses in gun safety and gun use for cheap. You wouldn't buy a car before learning how to drive it right? It's the same for guns. Unfortunately, many don't. Which can result in accidental discharges, theft, or having that gun used against them.
Correlation does not mean causality. you can correlate a lot of things since 1991. You can even state that road accidents that evolved deaths dropped over 50%. There is any link? No. That's stupidity. Violent crime dropped like in any other country, not because of guns. Education is one of the major factors that contributed to drop violent crimes.
Fallacious correlation? Gun defense is not solely the realm of homicide. MOST defensive gun uses do not involve homicide. And many do not require injury with the gun or even firing it. AS for the stats on homicide in general we need to know the source for the statistics since most American stats include suicide under the definition of homicide. Most of our gun homicides that AREN'T suicide, justified, or god forbid accidental, are gang related. Many of the US's gun homicide VICTIMS are gang members killed in violence between gangs, or innocents killed collaterally in violence between gangs, which would be better remedied by ending the war on drugs and our stupid drug legislation than anything to do with guns. Mass shooting stats are suspect depending on source as well, some played very loose with definitions (i.e. including an instance of a handful of teenagers shooting each other with BB guns as a mass shooting.) America has a SEVERE violence issue, stemming primarily from gangs and drugs. We have a MAJOR issue with people being put in prison and turned into victims and victimizers by our prison system for simple possession of cannabis. WE have a DIRE situation with regards to broken families and the broken people they produce. Few people talk about the corollary strength of both single parent households and abuse in future criminality and violence. Guns are a symptom, not the problem. And even scarier is the spider web of systems surrounding all of us that attempt to shoehorn us into being order followers and deferential to others' values rather than self-assured and with a strong foundation and internalization of morals and ethics. Every child should be imbued with the personal responsibility and RIGHT to stand up for and defend what is moral. When you are kept in a prison for the majority of your formative years under threat of force and all problems around you are shown to be fixed by either direct and immediate application of violence or abstract and deferred application of violence via government fiat the idea that violence is the answer and that aggression is OK become far too accessible as remedies.
1:29 as a european, these statistics actually make me go to sleep better :D I probably won't die by gunshot, except during my yearly visit to the states.
The sentence "we have a steady rate of mass shootings" is terrifying to me. But I also live in a small country where the last mass shooting was six years ago.
The US is a big country with lots of people, and a correspondingly larger number of mass shootings. Depending on how big your country is, it may or may not be more dangerous to live in the US.
I can't express how much I appreciate this series. It's so refreshing to see data from both sides broken down and analyzed without all the emotional tension or bias that inevitably comes with this topic. I can't wait for next week's episode; it's an issue that means a lot to me. Thank you for all your hard work.
The problem I always see with a video like this is that you take the US as a whole and compare it to other countries, which makes sense superficially. But the problem is we have 50 states all with very different laws and cities and towns with very different socio-economic situations. A more accurate comparison would be individual states versus foreign countries. Or the entire US compared to the entirity of Europe. Within US territories you also have additional location that show that gun control and legal access to guns do not correlate with the crime rate, like in Puerto Rico which has the single highest crime and homicide rate of any US territory, yet they have almost 0 legal ownership. We do need more research on this but I think there has been plenty to see that it isn't so black and white saying guns themselves are the problem. They are only tools and other things cause people to commit homicides.
Puerto Rico as a territory also doesn't get the benefits of membership that states do. Stupid comparison. Basically it's just easy to visit each other.
@@nickcarncross6137 Puerto Rico as a territory is still subject to all US law as well, and similar to states had the opportunity to pass its own laws that the federal government doesn't have jurisdiction over. Sharing no boundaries with anyone and they should also have a better case for controlling trade going in and out, including the trafficking and control. You just wanted to try to dismiss my comment outright because you don't know enough about how the territory works.
Also, doesn't sound like those studys include the number of lives saved or the number of people just justifiably injured yet saving lives. Again, doesn't say how many of innocent people just injured. NOW THIS IS A STICKY SITUATION
My question would be how would you respond to D.C. and Chicago which have such high rates of homicide and violent crime and stricter gun laws than other parts of the country.
I think a better way to put it would be that the top ten cities in the US [in terms of homicide rate] are all blue voting cities with greater restrictions than most of the country.
RomanLegion Do you have any idea how most countries have national regulations and the US has mostly state based laws yet no border control between them?
outliers in the data, unless you can show an actual trend, it's quite irrelevant. a likely cause is that they're densely populated cities/areas, and if people live much closer to one another, it's also easier to shoot one another. Gun regulations in a city don't have much effect because people can still get them easily in surrounding areas with lower restrictions. noise maker, one may be quick to put the blame on them being Democrats, but it's more likely the reverse is true: it makes sense that areas with more gun problems will be more anti-gun, as to try and get rid of the problems. Even if Democrats were the problem, that still wouldn't take away the fact that more guns equal more gun violence.
the thing is there is NO correlation between gun ownership and murder rate. www.washingtonexaminer.com/no-states-with-higher-gun-ownership-dont-have-more-gun-murders/article/2573353 also to ignore that 80% or more of gun murders involve drug or gang activity is kind of disingenuous as well, especially considering we have more GANGS than many countries have gang MEMBERS.
I am from southern WV, one of the most gun supporting places in the US. I love your videos and I like to look up varying opinions on topics like gun ownership. Thank you for remaining as un-biased as possible to present this stuff (it is very difficult to do I think). I minored in Philosophy back when I finished uni so I love listening to counter arguments that challenge my ideas and leave me constantly on the fence! One argument that I would make to you is that the benefit of gun ownership outweighs the costs for society. When I drive a car, I think about all the young people that die in one and think is it really worth it? Many people die every year, but the benefit a car brings to a society far outweighs the costs. The same can be said about building tall buildings that someone will eventually jump from etc. Coming from a family of hunters, there have been some rough times in life that hunting has been a legitimate means of saving us money when we really needed it (to be clear we also hunt for sport, but we don't believe in killing anything you aren't going to eat). It has been a huge bonding experience for my family (and many families) for generations. I also love getting together with some friends and shooting disks with shotguns (we had nothing else to do for fun in that small town lol). I think that the big disagreement on this topic stems from the benefit to cost analysis is a different skew for everyone. Anyway, I hope I was able to respond in a non-troll way that at least gives a decent perspective on the cost/benefit analysis.
Would love to see the violence rates when you restrict to, say, people who hunt regularly vs use a shooting range vs local militia vs bought a gun, never used it but to show off. In fact, even just the rates of what the typical gun owner *does* with their gun would be interesting to see.
When the study states that more guns correlates to higher homicide rates, is that homicide by firearm specifically or homicides in general (by whatever weapon)?
Countries that ban guns tend to have consistent homicide rates before and after bans. This would seem to be counter evidence for the hypothesis that guns are cosily linked with homicides.
jkevo16 sources. I want to know about other developed nations, I want the comparison to be more than "super strict to even more strict" If the studies you've personally looked at or the article your read looked at don't control for at least that, I don't care.
as in just before and just after? because that is probably one of the following situations: -guns are widespread, the government decides to ban any further sale of guns, but the people still have those guns they already had, so seeing a significant change would take quite a time as the government tries to get guns out of circulation -guns aren't widespread already and there already are very few gun deaths, so going from heavily restricted to completely banned doesn't make much of a difference.
your probably talking about the 1996 gun "ban" in Australia. when you look at the statistics ( www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide.html ) we see that the ban had no noticeable effect on homicide rates. Research on the ban at best is mixed at worst says that their appears to be little to no effect. in England a gun ban was instituted in 1997. the statistics ( www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/compendium/focusonviolentcrimeandsexualoffences/yearendingmarch2015/chapter2homicide) show a spike following the ban. when looking at gun bans it seems that they don't lower homicides.
Although I really like this vid and you taking on the topic, I would have found it informative if you'd ALSO shown the per capita death rate @1:10. Now we just know that MANY of the gun deaths occur in the US, but that doesn't say anything unless we also know how the total population is divided between those countries. Apart from that, awesome vid!! Looking forward to the next one ^^
Keep in mind that this data compares the US to DEVELOPED countries. The US has 101 guns per 100 people, making it the only country with more guns than people and almost ten times the global average of 10.2. Despite this, the homicide rate in the US homicide rate was 4.88 (per 100,000 people) in 2015 compared with the global average of 6.9 in 2010 (I know those are five years apart but they are super close to each other despite such a difference in gun ownership per capita. And in case you think that underdeveloped countries are predisposed towards more violence than developed countries, Bangladesh had a homicide rate of 2.51 in 2015 which is a little more than half the homicide rate of the US that same year. Liberia, India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Sierra Leone (lowest life expectancy), and Ghana are a few nondeveloped countries with a lower homicide rate than the US en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate Bonus: Burkina Faso (4th lowest score on the HDI) and Madagascar (also low spot) had one of the lowest homicide rates in the world en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita 1:10 this is just gun homicides, not other homicides 1:56 too bad there's no chart comparing the two cities before gun control was passed in Canada 3:17 so half of the homicides which took place inside the victim's home were due to relationship problems 10:14 THANK YOU, gun control advocates always talk about the mass shootings as a reason to tighten gun control laws even though it accounts for only 2% of all homicides in America. 10:26 also thank you, gun control advocates take the total amount of gun deaths and cal it "gun violence" as if all of them are homicides. At least half of all gun deaths are suicides. The gun death rate in the US in 2014 was 10.54 (per 100,000 people) but 6.3 of them were suicides and only 3.6 were homicides. Gun control advocates also point to fatal gun accidents but those account for a very low number at just 0.18. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
I’m curious, you shot a lot of statistiques but we don’t have the real numbers and what those statistic are really comparing. Do you compare the number of crime per city or the % of crime of a city? Without that I feel that your arguments are incomplete.
So happy that THIS channel told me how bad I am because I believe my life has value and should be defended against force... While I suppose the people in the medical field should have empathy, it's the SURGEONS that actually DO the underlings just... feel.
I don't keep guns for the protection of myself. I have guns in a safe at all times for when the government comes after the people, as the creators of the second amendment intended.
Well yea. Its better than getting Poland'd though. The founding fathers believed that it was crucial for the people to be able to rise against the government. Hence the guns. I think they would have argued that citizens should own weaponized drones, but...I'm not sure that sort of escalation (or any) is a good thing.
I take major issue with the continued use of these studies strongly correllating gun ownership with homicide rates. Not because I think they're false per se, but looking at our violent crime trend in the U.S. (down 50% in the last 20 years, and the portion of this crime that is gun-related has not changed much, meaning gun crime has gone down dramatically as well), as compared to gun ownership (which at the very least has not gone down by nearly as much) seems to conclusively contradict the assessment from this video. In other words, if gun ownership (as a percentage) remains roughly steady, but violent crime with guns goes down by 50% in a mere 2 decades, then it becomes very difficult to argue that there's a causal relationship. Shooting sports enthusiasts like myslef see the "number of guns owned vs. violent crime" graphs a lot. As the number of guns in the US has increased dramatically, violent crime has also gone down dramatically. I don't think this is a causal relationship, and I also think it's unfair to use "number of guns," because the popularity of shooting sports means that the same people just tend to own a lot more guns now. It'd be more fair to use "percentage of US citizens who own guns," which is what I tried to use above. That can be a harder number to determine (vs. just tracking gun sales), but again it hasn't been changing as much as violent crime. Going back to the safety in the home, it's just sensible that having a gun in the home increases the chance of someone in the home dying. I say that as a pro-gun advocate. However, this relationship can be seen with any number of things such as owning a vehicle. The question is whether the increased risk is worthwhile, and I believe (and I hope America in general believes) that this is an individual's or a family's decision, and not the government's. This can be a hard thing to accept. The video strongly implies that removing legal gun ownership would decrease homicide rate. This may be true. However it would also leave responsible people at a severe disadvantage against illegal gun users, or (historically, at least) tyranny. I believe, as the founding fathers did, that this is a trade we should be allowed to make. I'll conclude by saying I believe we *absolutely* should be conducting studies into gun violence. It may be extremely difficult to avoid bias, though. There are very few people in the country without a strong opinion on the topic. Unfortunately I believe a lot of the anti-gun crowd is anti-gun based on misinformation or fear of the 2% (assault weapons, mass shootings) like the video mentioned.
Realizing I contradicted myself somewhat between the 1st and 3rd paragraphs. To clarify: I think the "guns in the home" studies overstate the effect that guns have on violent crime in general. The statistics simply do not seem to bear out that "more guns = more crime," as I said. However, the lethality of crime increases. If we were able to magically erase guns from the entire country, that would almost certainly reduce homicides and suicides. That is not reality, however, and I believe enough in individual freedom and responsibility that I'm not sure I would want that even if it were possible. There's a lot more to be said here, such as improving gun education, but I'll leave it at that for now and see if anyone reads any of this.
Thanks for clear talk about the issue. Most people who oppose guns talk about gun crime, and I usually blow that off because one of my concerns is the amount of violent crime, not whether the crime was committed with a gun. You talk about gun control's effect on homicide, not gun control's effect on the number of guns, and that's therefore actually meaningful.
Thank you for the most clearly and comprehensively described break-down of gun violence in America I've seen in years, and for standing up for evidence-based policy at a time when it is increasingly stigmatized. Keep up the great work! You're making a difference!
Hi Aaron. As informative as this video was, I feel it is also...obvious. More guns = More gun homicides. Regretfully facts, evidence, analysis and comparisons to other countries are not going to change gun advocates minds or effect change. I've heard recommendations that perhaps enforcing mandatory gun insurance might be a possible step in the right direction. For example - just about anybody has a right to drive a car, however they need insurance, must be a minimum age, have good health, etc. Insurance companies can mandate criminal background checks, mental health reviews and provide relief for victims, which would hopefully help some of the issues plaguing gun ownership in the US. Can you speak on whether this might work as a way to side-step the constitutional arguments?
sadly no one wants to talk about suicides.. when they include them in the reason we need more regulation... or how most of the shootings are of gang kids ... so glad you at least brought those up.... mass shootings are just a way to pull at people's emotions, when seriously, we should be working on any plethora of medical conditions that take far more people every year... I mean car related deaths equal "gun violence" (including suicide).
I keep seeing commercials for "the Truth about Vaccines" documentary before HCT videos, which seems to be antivax. Is there a way to vet it and possibly blacklist the ad, if that's the case? I hate the idea of a commercial for antivax nonsense associated with the quality HCT content.
I think something that was hinted at but I think deserves more than a second of airtime is that correlation and causation are not quite the same. Also, sampling issues are to be given more thought. Not just gun crime, but all crimes tend to elevate in certain regions of the US. I can't recall the book that goes into this in detail at the moment, but I know Steven Pinker's book, The Blank Slate, touches on this. The cultural heritage and baggage that makes up particular regions of the US is different. The South, and the emigrants from there, have always tended towards a greater propensity for violence and justifiable violence. This was the case long before modern weaponry came to be associated with this violence. And we see similar conditions among its cultural emigrants into particular norther urban areas and out west. Why this is important in the gun debate is because there is an unstated assumption at play: if the guns were removed, the violence would decrease. Perhaps the lack of guns would move the needle a few degrees, but there is no reason to assume that would make the south a as peaceful as upstate New York. One place the study didn't look, which is a shame, is in Wyoming. A place with the highest rate of gun ownership (or perhaps just guns period) but among the lowest homicide rates in the US. While this study cited offered a great sense of control over various factors that the simple citing of Wyoming doesn't, it still seems to stand as a counter point on the face. I know the authors of the case study have a limitation on their time and resources, but I worry that the locations they chose are better suited to setting a point, than making a solid case. Not to say that was their intent, but that without other considerations regarding cultural heritage - not just gun culture, this is a somewhat predictable outcome. Perhaps studies with a wider pool (number of counties inside a single state) and that are demographically distinct (cultural heritage / baggage) might give more strength to the basic claims being made.
another point not usually covered in this topic: the wide spread ownership of firearms, which results in the deaths of about 11,000 people a year, greatly reduces the likelihood that we will have to suffer through the government slaughtering tens of millions a year for several years, which has happened in dozens of other countries that do not have widespread firearm ownership. if you think 'it cant happen here' just look at the 2 groups that were historically denied firearms, Indians and blacks before about 1920.
Experience shapes perspective, and it's hard to change that. Statistics don't comfort the unlikely few who are attacked in their home and didn't have a way to protect themselves. Just as statistics about how few murders are committed by AR15s each year doesn't comfort someone involved in a school shooting. But statistics do offer people objective (ideally) numbers by which to make decisions by.
How does the data compare to Chicago who’s is the most restrictive gun ownership city in the US but has the highest rates of gun violence? Moreover, what are the rates of illegally obtained firearms involved in homicides?
Okay, is there any valid measure anywhere in the video? 3 minutes in an still waiting. This is not how we can have a discussion, especially as it's not questionable that Dr. Carroll understands science and it's methods. (When he wants to?)
This will sound morbid but I am actually excited to see the suicide and gun deaths research for next week. I did a paper on the suicide rates in Utah ( and other states in the suicide belt) and access to guns was one of the possible reasons cited for high suicide rate.
4:37: You're establishing correlation, not causation. Is it not possible that people are greater risk for violence would be more likely to have guns, thus making the presence of a gun an indicator of their risk for violence, not the cause of violence? Just saying.
Throughout all the studies mentioned, I didn't see any mention of who actually owned the firearm being used in the homicide. I feel like that's kinda important info. It seems like you're trying to convince me that just having a gun in the closet increases the chance one is going to murdered. Or is does it increase that chance that the gun owner might commit murder? Cause those are two drastically different claims. One of which makes no sense, while the other sounds more like a reverse causation thing. As in, people more likely to commit murder are more likely to buy a gun, rather than the mere ownership of a gun making someone more likely to murder.
I hate to admit that the research you're presenting is solid. I firmly believe more guns do not necessarily lead to less crime, however I believe responsible carry(with associated permits) leads to more survivability of a violent attack. I also suspect that most gun use as a deterrent is far more prevalent than justifiable homicide, thus severely skewing data on gun use as defense. Its extremely hard to get data on someone pulling their gun and ending the conflict without firing a shot. There is no data on citizens holding attackers at gunpoint until police arrive, it's just not recorded. Furthermore, if the attacker runs away, anecdotally, most people don't ever report the indecent to the police. I don't agree with the idea that more guns leads to more deaths, with the exception of suicide. Its faster(and this is important) to pull a trigger than to cut deep enough to bleed out. Put simply, all of our violent crime is higher in the US. There is no question our "gun crime" is higher, frankly it's the best tool for the job and they have more easy access in the US. No credible research has been able to link gun density with crime. Most research on the other hand focuses on those who have committed a crime, then asks if they were gun owners. Thats like asking police if they carry a gun. The answer is probably yes. Its valuable data, but it is not an indicator of if owning a gun is a risk factor, but it is a good indicator if criminals are using guns or if they are more of a threat to police when arresting them. Research would have to follow gun owners first, then record if they commit a crime. That way you can have a control group that are not gun owners and compare their associated likelihood of committing a crime. Research done on conceal carry holders show they are about 5.7 times less likely to be arrested for violent offenses than the general public. (An Analysis of the Arrest Rate of Texas Concealed Carry Handgun License Holders as Compared to the Arrest Rate of the Entire Texas Population, William E. Sturdevant, PE, September 11, 1999) You should keep in mind, you typically are arrested if you use a gun in self defense, regardless if it's justified or not. Basically in this case you can look at a population before crime happens and determine if they are more or less likely to commit a crime. In the end, we need real, unbiased research. The best we have is inherently flawed because it either separates gun crime from other violent crime or it asks those more likely to commit crimes if they have guns. Its similar to going to imprisoned populations and asking if they're sexual deviants and using that to prove sexual deviants are more likely to commit crimes. Suicide is a different animal. Put simply guns will kill you before you have a chance to realize you don't want to die as much as you thought you did. Having a gun doesn't make you more likely to attempt suicide, it makes it more likely you will succeed. My anecdote on the subject is that I was going to kill myself with a knife because I didn't want to be counted as another gun suicide(When you aren't think right this shit makes sense. It also saved my life.) I was all ready to do it when fear stopped me, I had time to think and consider, time I would not have had with a gun. Since then I've bought many more guns and knives and motorcycles, all cared for with a healthy dose of fear and respect. The reasons I was going to kill myself had nothing to do with guns and had everything to do with social anxiety, I was lonely and killing myself was a way out. Before that year I hadn't own guns, since then I've owned several. Guns weren't the issue, my lack of mental health care was very much the issue.
One question. Since your likelihood to die by gun violence skyrockets when being around both crime/criminals and guns, couldn't we use that as reasoning to denounce crime/criminals? Because I would like to know how the likelihood of being the victim of murder by any means while being in that kind of an environment compares to not being around crime/criminals.
But to excuse those that are justified should not mean that they should be ignored. I hear people saying that extreme or strict gun control is justified if it saves 1 innocent person. What about the 100s saved by CCW holders over the last couple years. Don't get me wrong. There is a major problem in the US. Just tread with caution. Also,.. chicago. But the other side shouts St. Louis. Is it guns, or morals?
CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION... most of the times a really good parameter, a video that explains it very well, is minutephysics' "Correlation CAN Imply Causation! | Statistics Misconceptions"
I have to ask - I know the data is difficult to come by, but does the data account for the increased likelihood of death when a firearm is involved compared to, say, hand-to-hand fights? Also, I know and agree that the data does show that suicides are the bulk of gun violence, but most people who opt for a gun would find another way, probably drugs. As sad as it is, they want a quick, indirect death if committing suicide. I'll lay my stance out on the table, I'm in favor of the 2nd amendment. While not a gun owner myself, I do abide strongly by my understanding of the constitution, which I know others may interpret differently.
Not all intruders are strangers. There are some advantages to breaking into the home of an acquaintance rather than a stranger. It is possibly a mistake to assume, as this video does, that all (or, rather, the statistically relevant bulk) of intruders were strangers to the victims. There is also no measurement of cases where there was no homicide because a gun was present and used for self-defense non-fatally.
Guns are so much fun when used properly. It sucks that we they have to be regulated, but the mentally ill and the safety of others should come first. I love shooting, but it's not worth it if suicide and homicide rates sky rocket because of consumer gun ownership.
This was pretty nuanced and balanced, despite what I assume are your opinions on the subject. I would expect as much having seen many of your other episodes. However, I think you glossed over the most relevant question: causality. "Almost none of the data is causal," and then you go on directly to say it confirms the hypothesis that gun prevalence increases the homicide rate. "Can't rule out reverse causality, but..." I see your point, but what's the mechanism? Guns are inanimate objects; they don't even have psychoactive effects like drugs or alcohol (pending further study). So how does having access to a gun increase the risk of homicide with a gun? Is the person with access to a gun using it to kill someone else? Is the homicide victim killed by a gun they had access to? What constitutes "access"? I'm not sure the data sets used in these analyses are anywhere near granular enough to draw useful conclusions about how guns CAUSE crime. The reverse causality explanation is much simpler, that people who feel concerned about crime (regardless of actual risk) tend to have more guns around, but even that would be hard to pin down. I realize the guns in my safe are very, very unlikely to be used to prevent a crime, but I also can't see how they are likely to be used to commit one. Also, your study showing correlation between homicide rates and state gun laws doesn't pass the sniff test, at all. NH and HI, CA and TX are right next to each other. www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/10/06/zero-correlation-between-state-homicide-rate-and-state-gun-laws/
"Cause" is a funny word here, perhaps better would be "enable". I was just reminded of a fact I ran across researching an (econometrics) paper in Undergrad related to health insurance, forgive me for forgetting specifics. It's that a not insignificant percentage of the uninsured in the US are eligible for Medicaid; the number could have been as high 25%, but that sounds nuts to me. (This was the first result of a related Google search, I didn't really vet it: www.kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/estimates-of-eligibility-for-aca-coverage-among-the-uninsured-in-2016/). I bring this up because it is related. If we removed Medicaid from the universe magically tomorrow, there would be three groups: (1) those who lose health insurance entirely, (2) those who lose the *ability* to have insurance for essentially nothing even though they never took it up, and (3) those who had health insurance through Medicaid and somehow managed to insure themselves in another way (seems like a small group, but this isn't about health insurance). Change that "insured" statistic to a "committed murder with a gun" statistic and change the treatment from "removed Medicaid from the universe" to "removed access to guns", and we get to the same situation. The third group, in this case, cannot be helped, they will become a "1" here no matter what. The first group doesn't matter (in the case of guns, they have, hopefully, been prosecuted). The second group is the concern. In the case of the Medicaid thought experiment, it is very likely that someone in that group was planning on taking the necessary steps to apply for Medicaid two days from now and, as the result of our treatment, is no longer able to do so. For the analogy, this is a murderer that no longer has the ability to commit a gun homicide. (Just thinking now there are actually a few more categories. Those that lost access, never had Medicaid, and ended up getting insurance anyway is one; but I think the analogy holds.) The point is that the true cause of any single human's actions are never the direct result of policy. Policy can only encourage or discourage particular actions. The thing with gun laws is that in the US we really, really value those in the second group, those who would never commit even if they were enabled to do so. I don't really care whether this is good or bad, personally; it's just a fact of our society. I like to think of every social science statistic as a value resulting from hundreds of millions of functions (depending on the size of population of interest) that have a range of exactly two values (0 and 1) and an infinite number of variables. It is absolutely mindboggling to pin down a "cause" on the individual level. This is why social scientists of all stripes tend to just wing it when they have to explain a particular mechanism for the causality. If I had to wing it, I would put it on the inherent fluctuation of human nature. Murderous rages and suicidal tendencies come in waves, not as constants. Some people have very low levels at all times; some people have spikes and then very low levels; some people could commit one of these acts any day of the week. The way preventing access to guns helps prevent homicides or suicides is by removing a means at a time when those levels get too high. For the vast majority of cases, it seems like those levels only reach the point of action once in a lifetime.
Do you *really* think it is reasonable to organize a randomized controlled trial where you find a bunch of people living together and give some of the groups guns to see how often they kill each other? Because in the absence of that, all you have is correlation studies. That's as good as it gets.
He's basically saying that in a household with a gun inside of it, it was more likely that someone in the household would shoot someone else in the household (such as a husband shooting an unfaithful wife) than they were to defend that household from an intruder. Which basically means it's a domestic violence problem, not inherently a gun problem. So the point they are trying to make is that you shouldn't be allowed to have a gun in your home to protect yourself because sometimes domestic batterers kill family members. Nevermind that you aren't a domestic abuser yourself, of course...
"Most of the time the people breaking into your house just want your TV. You think these people are coming to murder your family? How many enemies do you have?" -Jim Jeffries, comedian
Do you have to go through a "gun owner's license" to make sure you're not crazy or a sociopath? Do you have to insure those guns for liability, for all the damage and death they could cause?
_Let’s be clear. The biggest thing people worry about with guns in the US is homicide_ You're already starting with a poor premise. I'm just as worried about getting shot *and living* as I am about getting shot and *dying*. I'd really just prefer not to get shot at all. Or get mugged, battered, robbed, raped, kidnapped, carjacked, etc., for that matter. I'm interested in the whole picture - not just how most gun deaths are not legal incidences. No shit, by the way, because until a "license to kill" is a real thing, whenever someone shoots a gun at another person, some crime is being committed (either an illegal shooting, or a lawful shooting in response to the commission of a crime). All this data shows is that a criminal is much more willing and able to victimize and shoot a person than a typical citizen is willing and able to defend themselves and others. I don't really find that surprising.
Studies that focus on justifiable homicides miss the simple fact that most defensive uses of a firearm do not involve that firearm's discharge. The mere brandishing of the firearm is often enough as it shows the perpetrator that the odds have changed and not in their favor. Most who would commit a crime aren't willing to risk getting shot for it. In short, they overstate the risk by omitting or failing to account for this simple fact. How many property and personal crimes are deterred because the intended victim pulled a firearm? Unfortunately those numbers aren't readily available. Most police departments aren't tracking that information. Actually, are any police departments tracking that? And complicating things is the person brandishing a firearm in self defense may not report the incident to police, though it is heavily advised they do, since the perpetrator may also try to call the police to say a gun was pulled on them. And as Massad Ayoob has said numerous times, the first to call the police is seen as the victim of the circumstance. And of those that are shot, most don't die. Handguns actually present a low risk of death in aggregate. I've seen estimates of about 6 in 7 to 7 in 8 of those shot with a handgun survive. There are cases of people taking numerous pistol and revolver shots, even to critical areas of the body such as the chest, and still surviving. In one instance, a perpetrator took 5 shots to the chest from a police officer's .357MAG revolver and survived! It's really quite amazing the dynamic on that mark. So justifiable homicides as any kind of indicator of whether defensive use of a firearm is justifiable is just... it's not accurately assessing the entire situation. Not even close. Since it fails to account for situations where a person brandishes a firearm but does not fire it, and situations where the firearm is discharged and strikes the perpetrator but the perpetrator survives. And gun proliferation ("states with more guns") is estimated using the _suicide rates_ for States and localities. There is no gun census, so we cannot know how many firearms are actually in private hands and what specifically they are. We only have estimates. Even in States with registration, law enforcement there will readily tell you that most firearm owners refuse to register. When Connecticut passed a law requiring registration of high-capacity magazines and "assault weapons", compliance was.... very lacking against State estimates of proliferation. A better way to estimate is with the NIST background check figures, but that is complicated by the States that now require an NIST check for ammunition purchases. But using NIST figures shows the central problem with attempting to use suicide rates to estimate gun proliferation: there are typically more NIST background checks per week than there were total suicides from 1981 to 2015 (adding together the total suicides as reported by the CDC WISQARS). Surveys and polls as a measure are also very problematic because there are plenty of gun owners who refuse to answer "yes" to any survey or poll asking if they are a gun owner. Provided they don't outright refuse to participate in said polls and surveys, which many will. This skews the numbers, making estimating proliferation still more difficult. And these problems means the attempts to estimate for research purposes mean gun proliferation is underestimated in research. And we can't really know by how much. So without an accurate estimate of proliferation, we can't really know the actual risk that is posed by gun ownership. So that means asserting "more guns means more gun deaths" is difficult to support since we can't really know.
One thing that I think could probably really affect your numbers and arguments on most homicides being from someone you know. Just to be clear I think probably you are right about most people knowing there killer, but I still think the numbers could be greatly off for one reason. The best stats I could find in a quick search was that around 38% of all homicide go unsolved. I would think unrelated homicides to be harder to solve, so I could really see that changing the stats on that subject buy quite a bit. Again I would think it to be responsibly logical to think that a person is more likely to know there killer, but I could also see ware many homicides that were committed buy strangers might not find there way into your stats. Just a thought🤔 I could be wrong. I Enjoy your channel.
These are some of the most difficult studies to conduct since you can't randomly assign populations to "guns" or "no guns" and there are a host of demographic factors that play into the results. Michael Shermer called it one of the most difficult statistical problems out there. The numbers are way too easy to manipulate.
Clearly Shermer is exaggerating. As a scientist working in Parkinson research, all of the factors listed above also affect our research. And this is also true of any other complex disease topic like Alzheimer, cancer, diabetes, and heart disease in epidemiological research. You don't get to random assign any of these either, and you have all the demographic issues with guns. What it really means is that science is messy, and very rarely gives clean answers on anything, but more of a probability map.
A bit of disputable information: "4% of gun deaths (or gun homicides, I forget which) were legally justifiable." Which was then made to the connection of protecting other people / themselves. So you can only protect others/yourself by killing someone with your gun, not just scaring them off?
I think that when noting that these studies only show correlation and not causation, we should also realise that causation is pretty much impossible to prove as you can't possibly study this under controlled circumstances, you can only look at cases and existing statistical data. But The fact that there is a strong correlation combined with a good explanation of how one could cause the other is the next best thing we can get. We should keep in mind that guns will never be the only contributing factor, but that doesn't mean we should disregard them as a major factor. E.g. Cities with dense populations are more like to have gun deaths because people live closer together, but at the same time, you have less emotional connection to others living there, which makes it a lot easier to kill someone (both on purpose and by accident). Areas that experience more gun deaths and therefore know the dangers of having guns around are more likely to be against guns and in favour of regulation, so it's also not weird that places with a lot of gun violence also (want to) have more gun regulation.
I for one do wish we treated this a little more like a health thing. Things like Number needed to treat with a 'no guns' prescription, a discussion of alternative benefits to gun ownership (are these deaths an acceptable side effect for other things? What are the tradeoffs?), and what sort of studies we want to see to make the sort of policy decisions we're interested in.
Artimis Fowl Okay. Using a very cursory technique: I found the number of gun-related deaths per capita in the US, and compared it to the same number in Canada and Japan. I chose them due to close cultural similarities. That gives us a number needed to treat of 10500. That said, number needed to treat is a poor statistic, because everyone will be treated. Using the current US population, this gives us 29400 deaths prevented.
+Nienke Fleur Luchtmeijer I think your conclusion is, frankly, dangerous. If you don't have a causal connection, you shouldn't ban people from doing what they want to do. Your assumption is that *something must be done*, so we should use the best available evidence to support action. That's a wrong-headed position. In the absence of good evidence, we should not act. I'll also point out that there's a perfectly sensible explanation of how high rates of crime can lead to increased gun ownership. What a tragedy it would be to prevent someone from protecting himself in a crime-ridden neighborhood where the police won't help you.
I don't think I have a problem with responsible gun owners. But all the responsible gun owners I know have plenty of stories of irresponsible gun owners.I don't get why the people who want to keep their guns aren't agreeing to legislation to keeping the crazies out of their gun stores and off their firing ranges. Seems to me like a little bit of regulation could go a long way to improving how non-gun-owners view gun control, as well as helping make the country a lot safer.
When involved in an assault, statistics are heavily skewed towards surviving if gun-prepared. For every other case, there are statistics. Of course in times of peace there are more people who are not killed by assaults. Acceptable risks to the statistical swarm around us, I say. The problem with lots of guns is ease of access of many assault-perpetrators, not the emotionally disturbed who should not drive a car or should not be let near deadly diseases.
Are these studies including police related gun violence? I will not deny that guns are dangerous and people use them to kill each other. But I will insist that the alternative, where only the government (and their police forces!) are allowed access to guns, is much worse. I will also insist that the guns themselves are not the issue at heart, it is the prevalence of violence towards fellow humans. Also, as someone who lives in a rural area, when I hear wolves and coyotes howl, I feel much, much safer with a fire arm. They usually leave you alone, but nothing is quite as effective at putting down a rabid animal as a gun. If your goal is to lower homicide rates, taking away the tools of murder might help, but its a dangerous kind of help, especially since you cannot take away all the guns, and your definitely making things worse if you leave guns the hands of the police, but not civilians. The real, better solution is proper healthcare and education, and teaching people to have empathy for their fellow humans. The united states might have the most gun homicides (and suicides), but we also have the worst health care of any developed country. Poor mental healthcare and guns don't mix, and I will insist that the solution is not to take away the guns.
The percentages at 1:07 aren't useful data -- the US has a higher population that most of the countries in the dataset, so of course the US would have the majority of gun deaths. The data should be re-presented with controls for population put in place.
I see plenty of flaws in the data represented. For instance, crime rate in Vancouver is 800:100,000 people while crime rates of 6,121:100,000 people in Seattle so unless 3 times the guns and 5 times the gun deaths are primary causes than maybe these cities that are "similar" aren't so similar. I don't mind gun control as long as guns are attainable for responsible gun owners but at least use good references when comparing separate areas.
I have heard some argue that taking away guns wouldn't lower murders but simply increase deaths by other methods (like stabbing). It's interesting to see that gun ownership is associated with higher homicides overall. I'm hoping we can have better research on this soon so maybe we don't need to debate so much and can take better steps to preventing deaths.
it makes sense if you give it some thought, guns are much faster, much easier to use, can be used at greater distances, and tend to be more fatal than other violence, so even if the number of attempts would be the same, the amount of actual successful homicides would be lower, and because using other methods requires more effort, the amount of attempts will likely also be lower (especially in impulsive cases where someone might shoot/attack out of emotion such as anger or fear)
The overall homicide rates of Canada and every core european country are a third of the homicide rate of the US, but this might have a lot of other reasons.
That too. I wonder too if a large number of people who already had violent behaviors/tendencies make up a significant number of gun purchases. If many gun owners were are already violent, that could mean they might have just killed someone with another method.. Ahhh this idk why I think this is such an interesting issue to discuss. I just wish mainstream debates on this weren't so heated and toxic.. but I guess they are this way since it kind of deals with life and death and government power.
The Art Kellerman study is another example of disingenuous studies. He fails to mention that most of the homes and victims were where felons already prohibited, criminal activity, etc. Situations outside of the average home owner and gun owner. It SHOULD highlight that the focus should be on the dangerous behavior of criminals. It SHOULD highlight that laws that add additional laws to people already trying to follow the law wont have the intended affect of lowering crimes involving guns from dangerous people. If you can understand that, you can start to understand why there is so much resistance to gun control proposals.
"of the 62 mass shootings between 1982-2012, 79% involved guns obtained illegally". Yes. And if people had time to follow up on the investigations (I admit it takes time and patience), they would have found that a majority of those instanced involved cases where people either knew (private and government) the future killers were dangerous, or highlights instances of bad data in the background check system, or the inability of law enforcement to communicate with itself. If the focus of "gun control" were on closing those gaps, you would actually see a measurable decrease. But that is not as sexy to politicians, easy to explain or understand (or popular) as gun control proposals, unfortunately.
1:27 this is sorta disingenuous, that is the US versus other first world countries, not the US vs the World like you said. Although it is written, not explicitly saying it is covering the points a bit. 5:13 Unfortunately you are only using the US and its laws as an example to prove this. Look at Swiss gun ownership. Its a different mindset about guns that they have. Otherwise good video; The only thing I would add is info about what types of guns are used for crime.
Swiss gun ownership is far below US gun ownership and exists largely in tandem with military service. Most gun owners in the US are not vetted beyond their criminal record nor trained to avoid accidents. Automatic weapons and selective fire weapons are illegal in Switzerland. The country has far more stringent gun laws than the US, including a universal registry and very exclusive carry permits.
Matapatapa We don't need to regulate in particular which gun you have, but who you need to be, a crime free mentally healthy adult, to buy a gun, although my methods are very different from others.
1. We're a much younger nation--both in national history and in population--than many on the cherry-picking list with weaker social services. 2. If you look at the homicide rates in individual nations, you can't show that new gun laws reduced that rate. In England, for example, the homicide rate now is the same as it was in the 18th century, even though gun control only get serious in the 1920s and only became onerous from the 60s onward. 3. Kellermann did sloppy work. He believes all gun owners are the same, but he focused on high-crime neighborhoods in three cities. 4. There is no correlation in the states between gun laws and homicide rates. Texas has a slightly lower homicide rate than California. Indiana's rate is lower than Illinois's. Virginia's rate is lower than Maryland. Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine have lower rates than Massachusetts. If gun laws reduce homicide rates, you have a lot of dancing to do to explain these facts. 5. We're at the least violent period in our history, and yet our gun laws have been loosening--on the federal level and in most states. The claim that gun laws reduce homicide rates is challenged by this fact. So once again, you've left a lot out of your analysis.
using justifiable homicides as a way of measuring guns used in self defense isn't a good metric. IIRC FBI statistics put justifiable homicides at around 900 per year. the lowest figures I know of for people using guns to defend themselves (including non-fatal and cases where they threatened an attacker with a gun but didn't fire) put it at 65000 incidents per year and many studies put it around 400000 -800000 I am a pro-gun person but I think states which require licenses to purchase guns should make people take gun safety courses in order to get their license. america's accidental gun death rate is ridiculous, it's several hundred times higher than other gun-friendly countries, completely disproportionate to the amount of guns owned. it looks to me like too many people are buying guns without knowing how to handle them safely.
Hm, but I could be one of the 2-3% that's saved because I carry. Vancouver, WA 175,000 pop south Washington next to Oregon Major crime 36:1000/ Vancouver, BC 650,000 pop across the North Washinton border Major crime 8:1000. Demographics are not similar and; just having guns makes for a more for a more violent population- that's an interesting Hypothesis? Don't you just love Stats. The more freedoms you have the more opportunity for extreme behavor. If you are bused to work-home and locked-in less opportunity to to have or cause problems- ya I want that.
51 high income countries? :51 “seemed to be” :51 to 1:30 all of those statistics are not numbers. Every life lost is tragic but if we are going to call something a crises or an emergency you have to have numbers. Saying something is 10x more or 90% of something is giving a statistics without context 2:20 So in Seattle there is a higher crime rate then in Vancouver. The fact that criminals use guns to commit crime is nothing new. 3:29 So nearly 30% of some number happened as a result of a criminal act 4:12 Based on a possibly flawed and biased study that even if it wasn’t was from 1993. Would you use 28 year old data to prove any other point? Also numbers. All I see are percentages. Plus 100 deaths are 10 times 1 death. So 100 times greater needs context. 4:52. Yes but you are trying to use the study to sway opinion about rights. 5:06. I love how anti 2A people on the left constantly complain about the lack of research into firearms. 5:41 Now your numbers are only 17 years old “significantly higher” Context ? 6:16 So lack of research? I just can’t understand the context. How many deaths are we talking about 7:47 “TRIED” to avoid? 8:27. Wow 9:31 Exactly 2/3 10:21 2% 10:33. If we removed all of the Suicides from the actual numbers ? Then what? Do we really have a gun problem or do we have a mental health problem?
Failure to address the socio-economic causes of homicidal violence has allowed your home state of Indiana to have a rate of homicide/per 100,000 population twice that of Oregon even though both states have virtually idendical rates of gun ownership. It's not just about the presence of guns. In our state, outside the Portland metropolitan area, the chances of being the victim of homicide by a firearm are vanishingly small, even though rural areas of the state have very high rates of firearm ownership. Guns may be the means, but society is the problem.
What are the violent crime rates, what are the homicide by other than gun rates, what are the death by stupidity rates. Anyone ever involved with statistics knows the same set of data manipulated in fashion can show equal arguement for the other way, so what are your ommissions.
Look at States like Vermont and NH. NH has a homicide rate that matches the Republic of Ireland - and you don't need to have a permit to carry concealed anymore. I want to be like NH
"keeping a gun in the home was strongly and independently associated with an increased risk of homicide." Just because you have a gun does not mean you are more likely to be a victim.
You are more likely to be an offender. And considering that most homicides are commited by relatives, your familiy members can take your gun and murder you. Yes, that happens.
I'm confused by what part of this you are confused by. Yes, keeping a gun in the hoe correlated with an increased risk of homicide according to this study. Because they counted the incidents of homicide. This isn't a guess pulled out of nowhere. This is what they were studying and this is what they found. You can argue that the study is misleading or faulty. But you have to argue with the methodology of the study or the logic behind it, then. You asserting "this is not true" does not cancel out actual statistical analysis. It's like someone said "I counted the number of sheep in this meadow, and there were three" and you said "that doesn't mean there are three sheep."
Yes guns are dangerous. More guns mean more accidents. Duh. The point of our right to bear arms was to protect us against not only bad citizens but from tyrannical government. The right to bear arms is very important and we should not let government take any of our rights away.
The tables in that study are a mess (for me) to understand. Per 100,000 makes sense, but then when it comes to the percentage deaths, that has to be totals, where the US population is enormous in comparison... in other words, it sounds a hell of a lot worse than it is. Unless I'm mistaken of course and it's still only per 100,000. Another beef I have with the study, is the conclusion that "These results are consistent with the hypothesis that our firearms are killing us rather than protecting us". That's horseshit, as they haven't done any measure of how many deaths have been avoided/lives saved, due to using a gun for defense. As an example if a person draws a gun in defense of self and others, and makes the aggressor run away because of it, that may be several lives saved. I'm not necessarily for or against guns (though I lean more towards "for"), but this study does have a flaw or two, at least considering how it's presented.
Could I argue that having a baseball bat in the home there a higher chance of get kill by such baseball bat, guns are tools just like baseball bats, kitchen knifes and hammers. tools don't provide motives we should focus on why it happened not how it happened for prevention. Just a thought.
He keeps pulling from biased studies, then tries to excuse himself from the poor data and his causation analysts by saying there is no causal effect, but you must assume it’s accurate because his information is overwhelming being presented one way. Then he throws out a distractionary fact that has nothing to do with the data that he presented. He does this over and over to confuse you and to overwhelm you with not so great data.
Defensive gun use is an interesting topic because only examining justifiable homicide overlooks scenarios where a gun was used to repel attackers, but not actually lethally fired. It's pretty difficult to get good data on defensive uses that don't end with body bags.
Well the cdc estimates 500,000 to 3 million defensive uses of a firearm in america every year. The data is there you just have to look for it, people won’t give it out to you because it wouldn’t fit the narrative of what they want you to think.
You are exactly right sir... that is the fist thought I had while watching this.
@@nickpedrone6613 that study was based on "self reporting of gun owners".
Once again, thank you for presenting the facts! Especially regarding "mass shootings" being such a low percentage of gun deaths in the U.S., and suicides being the vast majority of gun deaths. These are facts people often ignore in a crusade against gun ownership, pointing at mass shootings as a HUGE reason we need to restrict gun ownership. If a person feels gun ownership should be restricted, "mass shootings" are a pretty wobbly leg to stand on.
Your right ....Just using that AS a reason is a little weak....but i think mailing IT difficult to own guns and having to keep The Position of The gunsafe Secret from The Family and having to hide The Key could lower The hin related deaths and Mass Shootings....Mass Shootings are relatively rare but compared with Like Germany (where i did Not really Heard of more than three or four Mass Shootings ) there are a Lot of Mass Shootings....AS i Said compared with Germany and er have ...i think...
Stricter laws No Automatic weapons for example and No one IS allowed to know where your save is, where The Key is or what The Code is....If Police etc find Out a Person mit having a fun license Knies where The Key is or Knies The Code The guns are Talent away from You
I dont know how IT IS in america...
But from what i heared IT IS Not that strickt with weapons storage
Not to mention the US homicide rate is dwarfed by countries like Venezuela.
@@GunNr- Not a hard bar to trip under, unfortunately for them.
do a series on fitness. there is just too much bullshit out there.
That would end up being a channel
2:18. The reason for the number of "justifiable killings" 4% is what you cited) is so low is because often, 1) the gun is never fired because the criminal either fled or surrendered or 2) the gun owner fired a warning shot and nobody got hurt or killed. The gun still saved the gun owner's life despite the fact the gun was not fired.
I am grateful you honestly acknowledged that most gun deaths are suicides rather than homicides. And personally, I believe the ability to choose to end one's own life is a fundamental right.
As a gun owner I thank you for your level and balanced reporting on this topic. I have long insisted to all who would listen that we need more studies on gun violence. Without scientifically rigorous studies it is impossible to know what will help and what will do nothing but hurt legal gun owners. Maybe the answer really is get rid of all the guns, I hope not, but the only way were gonna find an alternative is through data and studies.
+
The CDC found guns are used defensively no less than 500,000 times per year and possibly as many times as 3,000,000. This far outweighs the crimes involving guns. The thing most studies overlook is that using a gun to defend yourself or others does not require you fire the gun. Indeed in FAR more than 90% of cases where an armed citizen defends themselves with a gun, they only have to show the gun to their attacker, the attacker flees, and no one is hurt. The CDC found this method of self defense the safest possible method, including safer than not resisting at all. One thing about this; the FBI and CDC found these numbers difficult to track because they estimated that at least hundreds of thousands of cases went unreported to the police. The victims who defend themselves with a gun without firing it tend to “go their separate way” once the danger is gone and not involve the police.
Yes, lots of guns in America. Despite that, violent crime has dropped by over 50% since 1991 according to the FBI, while gun ownership has increased. More importantly, most gun crimes are committed in poor urban area's by minorities, not because they are minorities but because of unequal distribution of wealth that imo should be addressed before gun ownership. Either way, more studies are needed.
As for the good people out there who decide to purchase a firearm, get training. Every state has multiple NRA certified instructors that offer courses in gun safety and gun use for cheap. You wouldn't buy a car before learning how to drive it right? It's the same for guns. Unfortunately, many don't. Which can result in accidental discharges, theft, or having that gun used against them.
8
Correlation does not mean causality. you can correlate a lot of things since 1991. You can even state that road accidents that evolved deaths dropped over 50%. There is any link? No. That's stupidity. Violent crime dropped like in any other country, not because of guns. Education is one of the major factors that contributed to drop violent crimes.
I really don't know why I typed this vague response and I am pretty sure was by mistake. I am going to own this error and respond with a 9.
Fallacious correlation? Gun defense is not solely the realm of homicide. MOST defensive gun uses do not involve homicide. And many do not require injury with the gun or even firing it. AS for the stats on homicide in general we need to know the source for the statistics since most American stats include suicide under the definition of homicide. Most of our gun homicides that AREN'T suicide, justified, or god forbid accidental, are gang related. Many of the US's gun homicide VICTIMS are gang members killed in violence between gangs, or innocents killed collaterally in violence between gangs, which would be better remedied by ending the war on drugs and our stupid drug legislation than anything to do with guns. Mass shooting stats are suspect depending on source as well, some played very loose with definitions (i.e. including an instance of a handful of teenagers shooting each other with BB guns as a mass shooting.)
America has a SEVERE violence issue, stemming primarily from gangs and drugs. We have a MAJOR issue with people being put in prison and turned into victims and victimizers by our prison system for simple possession of cannabis. WE have a DIRE situation with regards to broken families and the broken people they produce. Few people talk about the corollary strength of both single parent households and abuse in future criminality and violence. Guns are a symptom, not the problem.
And even scarier is the spider web of systems surrounding all of us that attempt to shoehorn us into being order followers and deferential to others' values rather than self-assured and with a strong foundation and internalization of morals and ethics. Every child should be imbued with the personal responsibility and RIGHT to stand up for and defend what is moral. When you are kept in a prison for the majority of your formative years under threat of force and all problems around you are shown to be fixed by either direct and immediate application of violence or abstract and deferred application of violence via government fiat the idea that violence is the answer and that aggression is OK become far too accessible as remedies.
Yes. More studies are needed. Comprehensive data is a must.
Good episode :3
1:29 as a european, these statistics actually make me go to sleep better :D I probably won't die by gunshot, except during my yearly visit to the states.
The sentence "we have a steady rate of mass shootings" is terrifying to me. But I also live in a small country where the last mass shooting was six years ago.
The US is a big country with lots of people, and a correspondingly larger number of mass shootings. Depending on how big your country is, it may or may not be more dangerous to live in the US.
I can't express how much I appreciate this series. It's so refreshing to see data from both sides broken down and analyzed without all the emotional tension or bias that inevitably comes with this topic. I can't wait for next week's episode; it's an issue that means a lot to me. Thank you for all your hard work.
The problem I always see with a video like this is that you take the US as a whole and compare it to other countries, which makes sense superficially. But the problem is we have 50 states all with very different laws and cities and towns with very different socio-economic situations. A more accurate comparison would be individual states versus foreign countries. Or the entire US compared to the entirity of Europe.
Within US territories you also have additional location that show that gun control and legal access to guns do not correlate with the crime rate, like in Puerto Rico which has the single highest crime and homicide rate of any US territory, yet they have almost 0 legal ownership.
We do need more research on this but I think there has been plenty to see that it isn't so black and white saying guns themselves are the problem. They are only tools and other things cause people to commit homicides.
Puerto Rico is not USA...
@@BICIeCOMPUTERconGabriele go educate yourself, your ignorance is showing.
Puerto Rico as a territory also doesn't get the benefits of membership that states do. Stupid comparison. Basically it's just easy to visit each other.
@@nickcarncross6137 Puerto Rico as a territory is still subject to all US law as well, and similar to states had the opportunity to pass its own laws that the federal government doesn't have jurisdiction over. Sharing no boundaries with anyone and they should also have a better case for controlling trade going in and out, including the trafficking and control.
You just wanted to try to dismiss my comment outright because you don't know enough about how the territory works.
Why the focus on gun homicides? Is there something specifically about being either wounded or killed by a gun that is particularly worrying?
I would much rather be shot than stabbed imo
Also, doesn't sound like those studys include the number of lives saved or the number of people just justifiably injured yet saving lives. Again, doesn't say how many of innocent people just injured.
NOW THIS IS A STICKY SITUATION
My question would be how would you respond to D.C. and Chicago which have such high rates of homicide and violent crime and stricter gun laws than other parts of the country.
RomanLegion without doing any research, "Exceptions are not averages" seems like a reasonable starting point.
I think a better way to put it would be that the top ten cities in the US [in terms of homicide rate] are all blue voting cities with greater restrictions than most of the country.
RomanLegion Do you have any idea how most countries have national regulations and the US has mostly state based laws yet no border control between them?
outliers in the data, unless you can show an actual trend, it's quite irrelevant.
a likely cause is that they're densely populated cities/areas, and if people live much closer to one another, it's also easier to shoot one another. Gun regulations in a city don't have much effect because people can still get them easily in surrounding areas with lower restrictions.
noise maker,
one may be quick to put the blame on them being Democrats, but it's more likely the reverse is true: it makes sense that areas with more gun problems will be more anti-gun, as to try and get rid of the problems. Even if Democrats were the problem, that still wouldn't take away the fact that more guns equal more gun violence.
the thing is there is NO correlation between gun ownership and murder rate.
www.washingtonexaminer.com/no-states-with-higher-gun-ownership-dont-have-more-gun-murders/article/2573353
also to ignore that 80% or more of gun murders involve drug or gang activity is kind of disingenuous as well, especially considering we have more GANGS than many countries have gang MEMBERS.
What about Switzerland also what about countries like Honduras
I am from southern WV, one of the most gun supporting places in the US. I love your videos and I like to look up varying opinions on topics like gun ownership. Thank you for remaining as un-biased as possible to present this stuff (it is very difficult to do I think). I minored in Philosophy back when I finished uni so I love listening to counter arguments that challenge my ideas and leave me constantly on the fence! One argument that I would make to you is that the benefit of gun ownership outweighs the costs for society. When I drive a car, I think about all the young people that die in one and think is it really worth it? Many people die every year, but the benefit a car brings to a society far outweighs the costs. The same can be said about building tall buildings that someone will eventually jump from etc. Coming from a family of hunters, there have been some rough times in life that hunting has been a legitimate means of saving us money when we really needed it (to be clear we also hunt for sport, but we don't believe in killing anything you aren't going to eat). It has been a huge bonding experience for my family (and many families) for generations. I also love getting together with some friends and shooting disks with shotguns (we had nothing else to do for fun in that small town lol). I think that the big disagreement on this topic stems from the benefit to cost analysis is a different skew for everyone. Anyway, I hope I was able to respond in a non-troll way that at least gives a decent perspective on the cost/benefit analysis.
Would love to see the violence rates when you restrict to, say, people who hunt regularly vs use a shooting range vs local militia vs bought a gun, never used it but to show off.
In fact, even just the rates of what the typical gun owner *does* with their gun would be interesting to see.
Agree!
When the study states that more guns correlates to higher homicide rates, is that homicide by firearm specifically or homicides in general (by whatever weapon)?
Another excellent episode. Calling out researchers by name was an interesting choice. I approve.
Thank you for this series. A series that actually covers things with facts, without hyperbole, without mass bias.
Oh man. I'm making my first gun purchase soon for home defense. Great to hear an analysis like this. It is troubling statistics for sure.
Don't worry. Odds are very good you'll never need it.
Countries that ban guns tend to have consistent homicide rates before and after bans. This would seem to be counter evidence for the hypothesis that guns are cosily linked with homicides.
jkevo16 sources. I want to know about other developed nations, I want the comparison to be more than "super strict to even more strict"
If the studies you've personally looked at or the article your read looked at don't control for at least that, I don't care.
I'd love a source on this
as in just before and just after? because that is probably one of the following situations:
-guns are widespread, the government decides to ban any further sale of guns, but the people still have those guns they already had, so seeing a significant change would take quite a time as the government tries to get guns out of circulation
-guns aren't widespread already and there already are very few gun deaths, so going from heavily restricted to completely banned doesn't make much of a difference.
jkevo16 check what happened in Australia before giving unfounded assertions
your probably talking about the 1996 gun "ban" in Australia.
when you look at the statistics ( www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide.html ) we see that the ban had no noticeable effect on homicide rates. Research on the ban at best is mixed at worst says that their appears to be little to no effect.
in England a gun ban was instituted in 1997.
the statistics ( www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/compendium/focusonviolentcrimeandsexualoffences/yearendingmarch2015/chapter2homicide) show a spike following the ban. when looking at gun bans it seems that they don't lower homicides.
How many mass shooting events are prevented by a suicide
Although I really like this vid and you taking on the topic,
I would have found it informative if you'd ALSO shown the per capita death rate @1:10.
Now we just know that MANY of the gun deaths occur in the US, but that doesn't say anything unless we also know how the total population is divided between those countries.
Apart from that, awesome vid!!
Looking forward to the next one ^^
Keep in mind that this data compares the US to DEVELOPED countries. The US has 101 guns per 100 people, making it the only country with more guns than people and almost ten times the global average of 10.2. Despite this, the homicide rate in the US homicide rate was 4.88 (per 100,000 people) in 2015 compared with the global average of 6.9 in 2010 (I know those are five years apart but they are super close to each other despite such a difference in gun ownership per capita. And in case you think that underdeveloped countries are predisposed towards more violence than developed countries, Bangladesh had a homicide rate of 2.51 in 2015 which is a little more than half the homicide rate of the US that same year. Liberia, India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Sierra Leone (lowest life expectancy), and Ghana are a few nondeveloped countries with a lower homicide rate than the US
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
Bonus: Burkina Faso (4th lowest score on the HDI) and Madagascar (also low spot) had one of the lowest homicide rates in the world
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
1:10 this is just gun homicides, not other homicides
1:56 too bad there's no chart comparing the two cities before gun control was passed in Canada
3:17 so half of the homicides which took place inside the victim's home were due to relationship problems
10:14 THANK YOU, gun control advocates always talk about the mass shootings as a reason to tighten gun control laws even though it accounts for only 2% of all homicides in America.
10:26 also thank you, gun control advocates take the total amount of gun deaths and cal it "gun violence" as if all of them are homicides. At least half of all gun deaths are suicides. The gun death rate in the US in 2014 was 10.54 (per 100,000 people) but 6.3 of them were suicides and only 3.6 were homicides. Gun control advocates also point to fatal gun accidents but those account for a very low number at just 0.18.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
I’m curious, you shot a lot of statistiques but we don’t have the real numbers and what those statistic are really comparing. Do you compare the number of crime per city or the % of crime of a city? Without that I feel that your arguments are incomplete.
So happy that THIS channel told me how bad I am because I believe my life has value and should be defended against force... While I suppose the people in the medical field should have empathy, it's the SURGEONS that actually DO the underlings just... feel.
I don't keep guns for the protection of myself. I have guns in a safe at all times for when the government comes after the people, as the creators of the second amendment intended.
+ (tho I have no clue what the second amendment was *supposed* to do.)
Good luck fighting drone strikes with a hand gun.
Well yea. Its better than getting Poland'd though. The founding fathers believed that it was crucial for the people to be able to rise against the government. Hence the guns. I think they would have argued that citizens should own weaponized drones, but...I'm not sure that sort of escalation (or any) is a good thing.
I take major issue with the continued use of these studies strongly correllating gun ownership with homicide rates. Not because I think they're false per se, but looking at our violent crime trend in the U.S. (down 50% in the last 20 years, and the portion of this crime that is gun-related has not changed much, meaning gun crime has gone down dramatically as well), as compared to gun ownership (which at the very least has not gone down by nearly as much) seems to conclusively contradict the assessment from this video. In other words, if gun ownership (as a percentage) remains roughly steady, but violent crime with guns goes down by 50% in a mere 2 decades, then it becomes very difficult to argue that there's a causal relationship.
Shooting sports enthusiasts like myslef see the "number of guns owned vs. violent crime" graphs a lot. As the number of guns in the US has increased dramatically, violent crime has also gone down dramatically. I don't think this is a causal relationship, and I also think it's unfair to use "number of guns," because the popularity of shooting sports means that the same people just tend to own a lot more guns now. It'd be more fair to use "percentage of US citizens who own guns," which is what I tried to use above. That can be a harder number to determine (vs. just tracking gun sales), but again it hasn't been changing as much as violent crime.
Going back to the safety in the home, it's just sensible that having a gun in the home increases the chance of someone in the home dying. I say that as a pro-gun advocate. However, this relationship can be seen with any number of things such as owning a vehicle. The question is whether the increased risk is worthwhile, and I believe (and I hope America in general believes) that this is an individual's or a family's decision, and not the government's. This can be a hard thing to accept. The video strongly implies that removing legal gun ownership would decrease homicide rate. This may be true. However it would also leave responsible people at a severe disadvantage against illegal gun users, or (historically, at least) tyranny. I believe, as the founding fathers did, that this is a trade we should be allowed to make.
I'll conclude by saying I believe we *absolutely* should be conducting studies into gun violence. It may be extremely difficult to avoid bias, though. There are very few people in the country without a strong opinion on the topic. Unfortunately I believe a lot of the anti-gun crowd is anti-gun based on misinformation or fear of the 2% (assault weapons, mass shootings) like the video mentioned.
Realizing I contradicted myself somewhat between the 1st and 3rd paragraphs. To clarify: I think the "guns in the home" studies overstate the effect that guns have on violent crime in general. The statistics simply do not seem to bear out that "more guns = more crime," as I said. However, the lethality of crime increases. If we were able to magically erase guns from the entire country, that would almost certainly reduce homicides and suicides. That is not reality, however, and I believe enough in individual freedom and responsibility that I'm not sure I would want that even if it were possible. There's a lot more to be said here, such as improving gun education, but I'll leave it at that for now and see if anyone reads any of this.
Thanks for clear talk about the issue. Most people who oppose guns talk about gun crime, and I usually blow that off because one of my concerns is the amount of violent crime, not whether the crime was committed with a gun. You talk about gun control's effect on homicide, not gun control's effect on the number of guns, and that's therefore actually meaningful.
CDC stats-30,000 guns deaths 15000 excluding suicides. 500,000-3,000,000 people are saved through defensive gun use. case closed.
Thank you for the most clearly and comprehensively described break-down of gun violence in America I've seen in years, and for standing up for evidence-based policy at a time when it is increasingly stigmatized. Keep up the great work! You're making a difference!
Hi Aaron. As informative as this video was, I feel it is also...obvious. More guns = More gun homicides. Regretfully facts, evidence, analysis and comparisons to other countries are not going to change gun advocates minds or effect change. I've heard recommendations that perhaps enforcing mandatory gun insurance might be a possible step in the right direction. For example - just about anybody has a right to drive a car, however they need insurance, must be a minimum age, have good health, etc. Insurance companies can mandate criminal background checks, mental health reviews and provide relief for victims, which would hopefully help some of the issues plaguing gun ownership in the US. Can you speak on whether this might work as a way to side-step the constitutional arguments?
sadly no one wants to talk about suicides.. when they include them in the reason we need more regulation... or how most of the shootings are of gang kids ... so glad you at least brought those up.... mass shootings are just a way to pull at people's emotions, when seriously, we should be working on any plethora of medical conditions that take far more people every year... I mean car related deaths equal "gun violence" (including suicide).
I keep seeing commercials for "the Truth about Vaccines" documentary before HCT videos, which seems to be antivax. Is there a way to vet it and possibly blacklist the ad, if that's the case? I hate the idea of a commercial for antivax nonsense associated with the quality HCT content.
Do a video on anti depressants and mass shootings
# of times a gun was used to prevent crime but was not fired is important too
I think something that was hinted at but I think deserves more than a second of airtime is that correlation and causation are not quite the same. Also, sampling issues are to be given more thought.
Not just gun crime, but all crimes tend to elevate in certain regions of the US. I can't recall the book that goes into this in detail at the moment, but I know Steven Pinker's book, The Blank Slate, touches on this. The cultural heritage and baggage that makes up particular regions of the US is different. The South, and the emigrants from there, have always tended towards a greater propensity for violence and justifiable violence. This was the case long before modern weaponry came to be associated with this violence. And we see similar conditions among its cultural emigrants into particular norther urban areas and out west.
Why this is important in the gun debate is because there is an unstated assumption at play: if the guns were removed, the violence would decrease. Perhaps the lack of guns would move the needle a few degrees, but there is no reason to assume that would make the south a as peaceful as upstate New York. One place the study didn't look, which is a shame, is in Wyoming. A place with the highest rate of gun ownership (or perhaps just guns period) but among the lowest homicide rates in the US. While this study cited offered a great sense of control over various factors that the simple citing of Wyoming doesn't, it still seems to stand as a counter point on the face.
I know the authors of the case study have a limitation on their time and resources, but I worry that the locations they chose are better suited to setting a point, than making a solid case. Not to say that was their intent, but that without other considerations regarding cultural heritage - not just gun culture, this is a somewhat predictable outcome.
Perhaps studies with a wider pool (number of counties inside a single state) and that are demographically distinct (cultural heritage / baggage) might give more strength to the basic claims being made.
another point not usually covered in this topic: the wide spread ownership of firearms, which results in the deaths of about 11,000 people a year, greatly reduces the likelihood that we will have to suffer through the government slaughtering tens of millions a year for several years, which has happened in dozens of other countries that do not have widespread firearm ownership. if you think 'it cant happen here' just look at the 2 groups that were historically denied firearms, Indians and blacks before about 1920.
Experience shapes perspective, and it's hard to change that. Statistics don't comfort the unlikely few who are attacked in their home and didn't have a way to protect themselves. Just as statistics about how few murders are committed by AR15s each year doesn't comfort someone involved in a school shooting. But statistics do offer people objective (ideally) numbers by which to make decisions by.
How does the data compare to Chicago who’s is the most restrictive gun ownership city in the US but has the highest rates of gun violence?
Moreover, what are the rates of illegally obtained firearms involved in homicides?
Okay, is there any valid measure anywhere in the video? 3 minutes in an still waiting. This is not how we can have a discussion, especially as it's not questionable that Dr. Carroll understands science and it's methods. (When he wants to?)
Still glad to live in Canada.
Unhappy to now be further south where illegal guns from the US are more prevalent.
The # of people killed by guns isn't really an important stat; the # of people killed in a nation is.
This will sound morbid but I am actually excited to see the suicide and gun deaths research for next week. I did a paper on the suicide rates in Utah ( and other states in the suicide belt) and access to guns was one of the possible reasons cited for high suicide rate.
are the stats including population density? U.S. population is about 5 times most advanced countries.
4:37: You're establishing correlation, not causation. Is it not possible that people are greater risk for violence would be more likely to have guns, thus making the presence of a gun an indicator of their risk for violence, not the cause of violence? Just saying.
2:27 did you just call out your crew on a live take?! Awesome
Throughout all the studies mentioned, I didn't see any mention of who actually owned the firearm being used in the homicide. I feel like that's kinda important info. It seems like you're trying to convince me that just having a gun in the closet increases the chance one is going to murdered. Or is does it increase that chance that the gun owner might commit murder? Cause those are two drastically different claims. One of which makes no sense, while the other sounds more like a reverse causation thing. As in, people more likely to commit murder are more likely to buy a gun, rather than the mere ownership of a gun making someone more likely to murder.
I hate to admit that the research you're presenting is solid. I firmly believe more guns do not necessarily lead to less crime, however I believe responsible carry(with associated permits) leads to more survivability of a violent attack.
I also suspect that most gun use as a deterrent is far more prevalent than justifiable homicide, thus severely skewing data on gun use as defense. Its extremely hard to get data on someone pulling their gun and ending the conflict without firing a shot. There is no data on citizens holding attackers at gunpoint until police arrive, it's just not recorded. Furthermore, if the attacker runs away, anecdotally, most people don't ever report the indecent to the police.
I don't agree with the idea that more guns leads to more deaths, with the exception of suicide. Its faster(and this is important) to pull a trigger than to cut deep enough to bleed out. Put simply, all of our violent crime is higher in the US. There is no question our "gun crime" is higher, frankly it's the best tool for the job and they have more easy access in the US.
No credible research has been able to link gun density with crime. Most research on the other hand focuses on those who have committed a crime, then asks if they were gun owners. Thats like asking police if they carry a gun. The answer is probably yes. Its valuable data, but it is not an indicator of if owning a gun is a risk factor, but it is a good indicator if criminals are using guns or if they are more of a threat to police when arresting them.
Research would have to follow gun owners first, then record if they commit a crime. That way you can have a control group that are not gun owners and compare their associated likelihood of committing a crime.
Research done on conceal carry holders show they are about 5.7 times less likely to be arrested for violent offenses than the general public. (An Analysis of the Arrest Rate of Texas Concealed Carry Handgun License Holders as Compared to the Arrest Rate of the Entire Texas Population, William E. Sturdevant, PE, September 11, 1999) You should keep in mind, you typically are arrested if you use a gun in self defense, regardless if it's justified or not. Basically in this case you can look at a population before crime happens and determine if they are more or less likely to commit a crime.
In the end, we need real, unbiased research. The best we have is inherently flawed because it either separates gun crime from other violent crime or it asks those more likely to commit crimes if they have guns. Its similar to going to imprisoned populations and asking if they're sexual deviants and using that to prove sexual deviants are more likely to commit crimes.
Suicide is a different animal. Put simply guns will kill you before you have a chance to realize you don't want to die as much as you thought you did. Having a gun doesn't make you more likely to attempt suicide, it makes it more likely you will succeed. My anecdote on the subject is that I was going to kill myself with a knife because I didn't want to be counted as another gun suicide(When you aren't think right this shit makes sense. It also saved my life.) I was all ready to do it when fear stopped me, I had time to think and consider, time I would not have had with a gun. Since then I've bought many more guns and knives and motorcycles, all cared for with a healthy dose of fear and respect. The reasons I was going to kill myself had nothing to do with guns and had everything to do with social anxiety, I was lonely and killing myself was a way out. Before that year I hadn't own guns, since then I've owned several. Guns weren't the issue, my lack of mental health care was very much the issue.
If 22% happened as a part of another felony like robbery, how are strangers accounting for less than 4% of the cases?
One question. Since your likelihood to die by gun violence skyrockets when being around both crime/criminals and guns, couldn't we use that as reasoning to denounce crime/criminals? Because I would like to know how the likelihood of being the victim of murder by any means while being in that kind of an environment compares to not being around crime/criminals.
But to excuse those that are justified should not mean that they should be ignored.
I hear people saying that extreme or strict gun control is justified if it saves 1 innocent person. What about the 100s saved by CCW holders over the last couple years.
Don't get me wrong. There is a major problem in the US. Just tread with caution. Also,.. chicago. But the other side shouts St. Louis. Is it guns, or morals?
CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION... most of the times
a really good parameter, a video that explains it very well, is minutephysics' "Correlation CAN Imply Causation! | Statistics Misconceptions"
I have to ask - I know the data is difficult to come by, but does the data account for the increased likelihood of death when a firearm is involved compared to, say, hand-to-hand fights? Also, I know and agree that the data does show that suicides are the bulk of gun violence, but most people who opt for a gun would find another way, probably drugs. As sad as it is, they want a quick, indirect death if committing suicide. I'll lay my stance out on the table, I'm in favor of the 2nd amendment. While not a gun owner myself, I do abide strongly by my understanding of the constitution, which I know others may interpret differently.
My brother owns a gun to protect himself, but it's bears, not people that he's worried about.
Not all intruders are strangers. There are some advantages to breaking into the home of an acquaintance rather than a stranger. It is possibly a mistake to assume, as this video does, that all (or, rather, the statistically relevant bulk) of intruders were strangers to the victims.
There is also no measurement of cases where there was no homicide because a gun was present and used for self-defense non-fatally.
Guns are so much fun when used properly. It sucks that we they have to be regulated, but the mentally ill and the safety of others should come first. I love shooting, but it's not worth it if suicide and homicide rates sky rocket because of consumer gun ownership.
This was pretty nuanced and balanced, despite what I assume are your opinions on the subject. I would expect as much having seen many of your other episodes. However, I think you glossed over the most relevant question: causality. "Almost none of the data is causal," and then you go on directly to say it confirms the hypothesis that gun prevalence increases the homicide rate. "Can't rule out reverse causality, but..." I see your point, but what's the mechanism?
Guns are inanimate objects; they don't even have psychoactive effects like drugs or alcohol (pending further study). So how does having access to a gun increase the risk of homicide with a gun? Is the person with access to a gun using it to kill someone else? Is the homicide victim killed by a gun they had access to? What constitutes "access"? I'm not sure the data sets used in these analyses are anywhere near granular enough to draw useful conclusions about how guns CAUSE crime. The reverse causality explanation is much simpler, that people who feel concerned about crime (regardless of actual risk) tend to have more guns around, but even that would be hard to pin down. I realize the guns in my safe are very, very unlikely to be used to prevent a crime, but I also can't see how they are likely to be used to commit one.
Also, your study showing correlation between homicide rates and state gun laws doesn't pass the sniff test, at all. NH and HI, CA and TX are right next to each other. www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/10/06/zero-correlation-between-state-homicide-rate-and-state-gun-laws/
"Cause" is a funny word here, perhaps better would be "enable". I was just reminded of a fact I ran across researching an (econometrics) paper in Undergrad related to health insurance, forgive me for forgetting specifics. It's that a not insignificant percentage of the uninsured in the US are eligible for Medicaid; the number could have been as high 25%, but that sounds nuts to me. (This was the first result of a related Google search, I didn't really vet it: www.kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/estimates-of-eligibility-for-aca-coverage-among-the-uninsured-in-2016/). I bring this up because it is related. If we removed Medicaid from the universe magically tomorrow, there would be three groups: (1) those who lose health insurance entirely, (2) those who lose the *ability* to have insurance for essentially nothing even though they never took it up, and (3) those who had health insurance through Medicaid and somehow managed to insure themselves in another way (seems like a small group, but this isn't about health insurance). Change that "insured" statistic to a "committed murder with a gun" statistic and change the treatment from "removed Medicaid from the universe" to "removed access to guns", and we get to the same situation. The third group, in this case, cannot be helped, they will become a "1" here no matter what. The first group doesn't matter (in the case of guns, they have, hopefully, been prosecuted). The second group is the concern. In the case of the Medicaid thought experiment, it is very likely that someone in that group was planning on taking the necessary steps to apply for Medicaid two days from now and, as the result of our treatment, is no longer able to do so. For the analogy, this is a murderer that no longer has the ability to commit a gun homicide.
(Just thinking now there are actually a few more categories. Those that lost access, never had Medicaid, and ended up getting insurance anyway is one; but I think the analogy holds.)
The point is that the true cause of any single human's actions are never the direct result of policy. Policy can only encourage or discourage particular actions. The thing with gun laws is that in the US we really, really value those in the second group, those who would never commit even if they were enabled to do so. I don't really care whether this is good or bad, personally; it's just a fact of our society.
I like to think of every social science statistic as a value resulting from hundreds of millions of functions (depending on the size of population of interest) that have a range of exactly two values (0 and 1) and an infinite number of variables. It is absolutely mindboggling to pin down a "cause" on the individual level. This is why social scientists of all stripes tend to just wing it when they have to explain a particular mechanism for the causality.
If I had to wing it, I would put it on the inherent fluctuation of human nature. Murderous rages and suicidal tendencies come in waves, not as constants. Some people have very low levels at all times; some people have spikes and then very low levels; some people could commit one of these acts any day of the week. The way preventing access to guns helps prevent homicides or suicides is by removing a means at a time when those levels get too high. For the vast majority of cases, it seems like those levels only reach the point of action once in a lifetime.
Do you *really* think it is reasonable to organize a randomized controlled trial where you find a bunch of people living together and give some of the groups guns to see how often they kill each other?
Because in the absence of that, all you have is correlation studies. That's as good as it gets.
He's basically saying that in a household with a gun inside of it, it was more likely that someone in the household would shoot someone else in the household (such as a husband shooting an unfaithful wife) than they were to defend that household from an intruder.
Which basically means it's a domestic violence problem, not inherently a gun problem. So the point they are trying to make is that you shouldn't be allowed to have a gun in your home to protect yourself because sometimes domestic batterers kill family members. Nevermind that you aren't a domestic abuser yourself, of course...
"Most of the time the people breaking into your house just want your TV. You think these people are coming to murder your family? How many enemies do you have?" -Jim Jeffries, comedian
Excellent sketch indeed!
And I want to protect my property, so hands off my guns.
So he gives violent criminals the benefit of the doubt, but wants to enact authoritarian policies against law abiding gun owners? That's rich.
+Ben Ozcomert - "FUCK YOU! DON'T TAKE MY GUNS!" LOL
Do you have to go through a "gun owner's license" to make sure you're not crazy or a sociopath? Do you have to insure those guns for liability, for all the damage and death they could cause?
_Let’s be clear. The biggest thing people worry about with guns in the US is homicide_
You're already starting with a poor premise. I'm just as worried about getting shot *and living* as I am about getting shot and *dying*. I'd really just prefer not to get shot at all. Or get mugged, battered, robbed, raped, kidnapped, carjacked, etc., for that matter.
I'm interested in the whole picture - not just how most gun deaths are not legal incidences. No shit, by the way, because until a "license to kill" is a real thing, whenever someone shoots a gun at another person, some crime is being committed (either an illegal shooting, or a lawful shooting in response to the commission of a crime). All this data shows is that a criminal is much more willing and able to victimize and shoot a person than a typical citizen is willing and able to defend themselves and others. I don't really find that surprising.
Studies that focus on justifiable homicides miss the simple fact that most defensive uses of a firearm do not involve that firearm's discharge. The mere brandishing of the firearm is often enough as it shows the perpetrator that the odds have changed and not in their favor. Most who would commit a crime aren't willing to risk getting shot for it. In short, they overstate the risk by omitting or failing to account for this simple fact.
How many property and personal crimes are deterred because the intended victim pulled a firearm? Unfortunately those numbers aren't readily available. Most police departments aren't tracking that information. Actually, are any police departments tracking that? And complicating things is the person brandishing a firearm in self defense may not report the incident to police, though it is heavily advised they do, since the perpetrator may also try to call the police to say a gun was pulled on them. And as Massad Ayoob has said numerous times, the first to call the police is seen as the victim of the circumstance.
And of those that are shot, most don't die. Handguns actually present a low risk of death in aggregate. I've seen estimates of about 6 in 7 to 7 in 8 of those shot with a handgun survive. There are cases of people taking numerous pistol and revolver shots, even to critical areas of the body such as the chest, and still surviving. In one instance, a perpetrator took 5 shots to the chest from a police officer's .357MAG revolver and survived! It's really quite amazing the dynamic on that mark.
So justifiable homicides as any kind of indicator of whether defensive use of a firearm is justifiable is just... it's not accurately assessing the entire situation. Not even close. Since it fails to account for situations where a person brandishes a firearm but does not fire it, and situations where the firearm is discharged and strikes the perpetrator but the perpetrator survives.
And gun proliferation ("states with more guns") is estimated using the _suicide rates_ for States and localities. There is no gun census, so we cannot know how many firearms are actually in private hands and what specifically they are. We only have estimates.
Even in States with registration, law enforcement there will readily tell you that most firearm owners refuse to register. When Connecticut passed a law requiring registration of high-capacity magazines and "assault weapons", compliance was.... very lacking against State estimates of proliferation.
A better way to estimate is with the NIST background check figures, but that is complicated by the States that now require an NIST check for ammunition purchases. But using NIST figures shows the central problem with attempting to use suicide rates to estimate gun proliferation: there are typically more NIST background checks per week than there were total suicides from 1981 to 2015 (adding together the total suicides as reported by the CDC WISQARS).
Surveys and polls as a measure are also very problematic because there are plenty of gun owners who refuse to answer "yes" to any survey or poll asking if they are a gun owner. Provided they don't outright refuse to participate in said polls and surveys, which many will. This skews the numbers, making estimating proliferation still more difficult. And these problems means the attempts to estimate for research purposes mean gun proliferation is underestimated in research. And we can't really know by how much.
So without an accurate estimate of proliferation, we can't really know the actual risk that is posed by gun ownership. So that means asserting "more guns means more gun deaths" is difficult to support since we can't really know.
One thing that I think could probably really affect your numbers and arguments on most homicides being from someone you know. Just to be clear I think probably you are right about most people knowing there killer, but I still think the numbers could be greatly off for one reason. The best stats I could find in a quick search was that around 38% of all homicide go unsolved. I would think unrelated homicides to be harder to solve, so I could really see that changing the stats on that subject buy quite a bit. Again I would think it to be responsibly logical to think that a person is more likely to know there killer, but I could also see ware many homicides that were committed buy strangers might not find there way into your stats. Just a thought🤔 I could be wrong. I Enjoy your channel.
These are some of the most difficult studies to conduct since you can't randomly assign populations to "guns" or "no guns" and there are a host of demographic factors that play into the results. Michael Shermer called it one of the most difficult statistical problems out there. The numbers are way too easy to manipulate.
Sounds like a fun source (for the quote) to have.
Clearly Shermer is exaggerating.
As a scientist working in Parkinson research, all of the factors listed above also affect our research. And this is also true of any other complex disease topic like Alzheimer, cancer, diabetes, and heart disease in epidemiological research. You don't get to random assign any of these either, and you have all the demographic issues with guns.
What it really means is that science is messy, and very rarely gives clean answers on anything, but more of a probability map.
A bit of disputable information: "4% of gun deaths (or gun homicides, I forget which) were legally justifiable." Which was then made to the connection of protecting other people / themselves.
So you can only protect others/yourself by killing someone with your gun, not just scaring them off?
If scaring them would be enough, one could use a gas pistol -> no need for real guns.
I think that when noting that these studies only show correlation and not causation, we should also realise that causation is pretty much impossible to prove as you can't possibly study this under controlled circumstances, you can only look at cases and existing statistical data. But The fact that there is a strong correlation combined with a good explanation of how one could cause the other is the next best thing we can get.
We should keep in mind that guns will never be the only contributing factor, but that doesn't mean we should disregard them as a major factor. E.g. Cities with dense populations are more like to have gun deaths because people live closer together, but at the same time, you have less emotional connection to others living there, which makes it a lot easier to kill someone (both on purpose and by accident).
Areas that experience more gun deaths and therefore know the dangers of having guns around are more likely to be against guns and in favour of regulation, so it's also not weird that places with a lot of gun violence also (want to) have more gun regulation.
I for one do wish we treated this a little more like a health thing. Things like Number needed to treat with a 'no guns' prescription, a discussion of alternative benefits to gun ownership (are these deaths an acceptable side effect for other things? What are the tradeoffs?), and what sort of studies we want to see to make the sort of policy decisions we're interested in.
I'm sorry, I'm don't understand what you're trying to say, would you mind phrasing it differently, maybe that I understand it then
Artimis Fowl Okay. Using a very cursory technique: I found the number of gun-related deaths per capita in the US, and compared it to the same number in Canada and Japan. I chose them due to close cultural similarities. That gives us a number needed to treat of 10500. That said, number needed to treat is a poor statistic, because everyone will be treated. Using the current US population, this gives us 29400 deaths prevented.
+Nienke Fleur Luchtmeijer I think your conclusion is, frankly, dangerous. If you don't have a causal connection, you shouldn't ban people from doing what they want to do. Your assumption is that *something must be done*, so we should use the best available evidence to support action. That's a wrong-headed position. In the absence of good evidence, we should not act.
I'll also point out that there's a perfectly sensible explanation of how high rates of crime can lead to increased gun ownership. What a tragedy it would be to prevent someone from protecting himself in a crime-ridden neighborhood where the police won't help you.
I don't think I have a problem with responsible gun owners. But all the responsible gun owners I know have plenty of stories of irresponsible gun owners.I don't get why the people who want to keep their guns aren't agreeing to legislation to keeping the crazies out of their gun stores and off their firing ranges. Seems to me like a little bit of regulation could go a long way to improving how non-gun-owners view gun control, as well as helping make the country a lot safer.
When involved in an assault, statistics are heavily skewed towards surviving if gun-prepared. For every other case, there are statistics. Of course in times of peace there are more people who are not killed by assaults. Acceptable risks to the statistical swarm around us, I say.
The problem with lots of guns is ease of access of many assault-perpetrators, not the emotionally disturbed who should not drive a car or should not be let near deadly diseases.
Can you get some data on gun deaths due to gang violence, because we won’t be able to stop that by lowering the amount of guns in america
Are these studies including police related gun violence?
I will not deny that guns are dangerous and people use them to kill each other. But I will insist that the alternative, where only the government (and their police forces!) are allowed access to guns, is much worse. I will also insist that the guns themselves are not the issue at heart, it is the prevalence of violence towards fellow humans.
Also, as someone who lives in a rural area, when I hear wolves and coyotes howl, I feel much, much safer with a fire arm. They usually leave you alone, but nothing is quite as effective at putting down a rabid animal as a gun.
If your goal is to lower homicide rates, taking away the tools of murder might help, but its a dangerous kind of help, especially since you cannot take away all the guns, and your definitely making things worse if you leave guns the hands of the police, but not civilians. The real, better solution is proper healthcare and education, and teaching people to have empathy for their fellow humans.
The united states might have the most gun homicides (and suicides), but we also have the worst health care of any developed country. Poor mental healthcare and guns don't mix, and I will insist that the solution is not to take away the guns.
The percentages at 1:07 aren't useful data -- the US has a higher population that most of the countries in the dataset, so of course the US would have the majority of gun deaths. The data should be re-presented with controls for population put in place.
All these countries combined have a higher population than the USA. That's what that piece is about.
I see plenty of flaws in the data represented. For instance, crime rate in Vancouver is 800:100,000 people while crime rates of 6,121:100,000 people in Seattle so unless 3 times the guns and 5 times the gun deaths are primary causes than maybe these cities that are "similar" aren't so similar. I don't mind gun control as long as guns are attainable for responsible gun owners but at least use good references when comparing separate areas.
You can not leave out the cases where a gun was used defensively without being discharged. At least some of these would have prevented death.
Fr. John A Anderson. God Rest Your Soul and Bless your families.
I have heard some argue that taking away guns wouldn't lower murders but simply increase deaths by other methods (like stabbing). It's interesting to see that gun ownership is associated with higher homicides overall. I'm hoping we can have better research on this soon so maybe we don't need to debate so much and can take better steps to preventing deaths.
it makes sense if you give it some thought, guns are much faster, much easier to use, can be used at greater distances, and tend to be more fatal than other violence, so even if the number of attempts would be the same, the amount of actual successful homicides would be lower, and because using other methods requires more effort, the amount of attempts will likely also be lower (especially in impulsive cases where someone might shoot/attack out of emotion such as anger or fear)
The overall homicide rates of Canada and every core european country are
a third of the homicide rate of the US, but this might have a lot of
other reasons.
That too. I wonder too if a large number of people who already had violent behaviors/tendencies make up a significant number of gun purchases. If many gun owners were are already violent, that could mean they might have just killed someone with another method..
Ahhh this idk why I think this is such an interesting issue to discuss. I just wish mainstream debates on this weren't so heated and toxic.. but I guess they are this way since it kind of deals with life and death and government power.
The Art Kellerman study is another example of disingenuous studies. He fails to mention that most of the homes and victims were where felons already prohibited, criminal activity, etc. Situations outside of the average home owner and gun owner. It SHOULD highlight that the focus should be on the dangerous behavior of criminals. It SHOULD highlight that laws that add additional laws to people already trying to follow the law wont have the intended affect of lowering crimes involving guns from dangerous people. If you can understand that, you can start to understand why there is so much resistance to gun control proposals.
"of the 62 mass shootings between 1982-2012, 79% involved guns obtained illegally". Yes. And if people had time to follow up on the investigations (I admit it takes time and patience), they would have found that a majority of those instanced involved cases where people either knew (private and government) the future killers were dangerous, or highlights instances of bad data in the background check system, or the inability of law enforcement to communicate with itself. If the focus of "gun control" were on closing those gaps, you would actually see a measurable decrease. But that is not as sexy to politicians, easy to explain or understand (or popular) as gun control proposals, unfortunately.
1:27 this is sorta disingenuous, that is the US versus other first world countries, not the US vs the World like you said.
Although it is written, not explicitly saying it is covering the points a bit.
5:13 Unfortunately you are only using the US and its laws as an example to prove this. Look at Swiss gun ownership.
Its a different mindset about guns that they have.
Otherwise good video; The only thing I would add is info about what types of guns are used for crime.
Matapatapa He did explicitly say it, not just in writing. "Among this data set of countries in the OECD..."
A bit of a roundabout way to say it.
Matapatapa I thought it was clear, yet I see what you mean. But what would have been a better way of saying it?
Swiss gun ownership is far below US gun ownership and exists largely in tandem with military service. Most gun owners in the US are not vetted beyond their criminal record nor trained to avoid accidents. Automatic weapons and selective fire weapons are illegal in Switzerland. The country has far more stringent gun laws than the US, including a universal registry and very exclusive carry permits.
Matapatapa We don't need to regulate in particular which gun you have, but who you need to be, a crime free mentally healthy adult, to buy a gun, although my methods are very different from others.
1. We're a much younger nation--both in national history and in population--than many on the cherry-picking list with weaker social services.
2. If you look at the homicide rates in individual nations, you can't show that new gun laws reduced that rate. In England, for example, the homicide rate now is the same as it was in the 18th century, even though gun control only get serious in the 1920s and only became onerous from the 60s onward.
3. Kellermann did sloppy work. He believes all gun owners are the same, but he focused on high-crime neighborhoods in three cities.
4. There is no correlation in the states between gun laws and homicide rates. Texas has a slightly lower homicide rate than California. Indiana's rate is lower than Illinois's. Virginia's rate is lower than Maryland. Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine have lower rates than Massachusetts. If gun laws reduce homicide rates, you have a lot of dancing to do to explain these facts.
5. We're at the least violent period in our history, and yet our gun laws have been loosening--on the federal level and in most states. The claim that gun laws reduce homicide rates is challenged by this fact.
So once again, you've left a lot out of your analysis.
'Crime of passion' homicides wouldn't occur if everyone owned M134 Miniguns instead of handguns....
using justifiable homicides as a way of measuring guns used in self defense isn't a good metric. IIRC FBI statistics put justifiable homicides at around 900 per year. the lowest figures I know of for people using guns to defend themselves (including non-fatal and cases where they threatened an attacker with a gun but didn't fire) put it at 65000 incidents per year and many studies put it around 400000 -800000
I am a pro-gun person but I think states which require licenses to purchase guns should make people take gun safety courses in order to get their license. america's accidental gun death rate is ridiculous, it's several hundred times higher than other gun-friendly countries, completely disproportionate to the amount of guns owned. it looks to me like too many people are buying guns without knowing how to handle them safely.
Hm, but I could be one of the 2-3% that's saved because I carry. Vancouver, WA 175,000 pop south Washington next to Oregon Major crime 36:1000/ Vancouver, BC 650,000 pop across the North Washinton border Major crime 8:1000. Demographics are not similar and; just having guns makes for a more for a more violent population- that's an interesting Hypothesis? Don't you just love Stats. The more freedoms you have the more opportunity for extreme behavor. If you are bused to work-home and locked-in less opportunity to to have or cause problems- ya I want that.
51 high income countries?
:51 “seemed to be”
:51 to 1:30 all of those statistics are not numbers. Every life lost is tragic but if we are going to call something a crises or an emergency you have to have numbers. Saying something is 10x more or 90% of something is giving a statistics without context
2:20 So in Seattle there is a higher crime rate then in Vancouver. The fact that criminals use guns to commit crime is nothing new.
3:29 So nearly 30% of some number happened as a result of a criminal act
4:12 Based on a possibly flawed and biased study that even if it wasn’t was from 1993. Would you use 28 year old data to prove any other point? Also numbers. All I see are percentages. Plus 100 deaths are 10 times 1 death. So 100 times greater needs context.
4:52. Yes but you are trying to use the study to sway opinion about rights.
5:06. I love how anti 2A people on the left constantly complain about the lack of research into firearms.
5:41 Now your numbers are only 17 years old “significantly higher” Context ?
6:16 So lack of research? I just can’t understand the context. How many deaths are we talking about
7:47 “TRIED” to avoid?
8:27. Wow
9:31 Exactly 2/3
10:21 2%
10:33. If we removed all of the Suicides from the actual numbers ? Then what? Do we really have a gun problem or do we have a mental health problem?
if they data shouldn't be used then why are you using it
states with more legal guns have lower violence rates. The studies you are quoting are flawed.
Hey Healthcare Triage first thanks for all youre videos i really appreciate everything you are doing for us (our species)
Failure to address the socio-economic causes of homicidal violence has allowed your home state of Indiana to have a rate of homicide/per 100,000 population twice that of Oregon even though both states have virtually idendical rates of gun ownership. It's not just about the presence of guns. In our state, outside the Portland metropolitan area, the chances of being the victim of homicide by a firearm are vanishingly small, even though rural areas of the state have very high rates of firearm ownership. Guns may be the means, but society is the problem.
What are the violent crime rates, what are the homicide by other than gun rates, what are the death by stupidity rates. Anyone ever involved with statistics knows the same set of data manipulated in fashion can show equal arguement for the other way, so what are your ommissions.
Look at States like Vermont and NH. NH has a homicide rate that matches the Republic of Ireland - and you don't need to have a permit to carry concealed anymore. I want to be like NH
"keeping a gun in the home was strongly and independently associated with an increased risk of homicide."
Just because you have a gun does not mean you are more likely to be a victim.
You are more likely to be an offender. And considering that most homicides are commited by relatives, your familiy members can take your gun and murder you. Yes, that happens.
I'm confused by what part of this you are confused by. Yes, keeping a gun in the hoe correlated with an increased risk of homicide according to this study. Because they counted the incidents of homicide. This isn't a guess pulled out of nowhere. This is what they were studying and this is what they found. You can argue that the study is misleading or faulty. But you have to argue with the methodology of the study or the logic behind it, then. You asserting "this is not true" does not cancel out actual statistical analysis. It's like someone said "I counted the number of sheep in this meadow, and there were three" and you said "that doesn't mean there are three sheep."
Yes guns are dangerous. More guns mean more accidents. Duh. The point of our right to bear arms was to protect us against not only bad citizens but from tyrannical government. The right to bear arms is very important and we should not let government take any of our rights away.
The tables in that study are a mess (for me) to understand. Per 100,000 makes sense, but then when it comes to the percentage deaths, that has to be totals, where the US population is enormous in comparison... in other words, it sounds a hell of a lot worse than it is. Unless I'm mistaken of course and it's still only per 100,000.
Another beef I have with the study, is the conclusion that "These results are consistent with the hypothesis that our firearms are killing us rather than protecting us". That's horseshit, as they haven't done any measure of how many deaths have been avoided/lives saved, due to using a gun for defense. As an example if a person draws a gun in defense of self and others, and makes the aggressor run away because of it, that may be several lives saved.
I'm not necessarily for or against guns (though I lean more towards "for"), but this study does have a flaw or two, at least considering how it's presented.
Could I argue that having a baseball bat in the home there a higher chance of get kill by such baseball bat, guns are tools just like baseball bats, kitchen knifes and hammers. tools don't provide motives we should focus on why it happened not how it happened for prevention. Just a thought.
Thanks. I have no money t I do share your site.
I can see the conservatives face turning red.
Am I the only one going "no shit, doc!"
He keeps pulling from biased studies, then tries to excuse himself from the poor data and his causation analysts by saying there is no causal effect, but you must assume it’s accurate because his information is overwhelming being presented one way. Then he throws out a distractionary fact that has nothing to do with the data that he presented. He does this over and over to confuse you and to overwhelm you with not so great data.
You had me until you quoted Mother Jones.
Actual voters don’t represent the population at large? Who does, then?